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What is LtoJ®? LtoJ®is a formative assessment system with regular data for students, classrooms, and schools. Educators know precisely any day of the school year, if students, individually and collectively are on target to meet end of the year standards. Combined are the education initiatives of alignment, standards-based assessment, increased student engagement, and item analysis with the organizational initiatives of teamwork, building upon intrinsic motivation and the power of positive leadership. Some readers will immediately recognize this combination of initiatives as quality in education, quality improvement or using 5 whys. Unique to the LtoJ® process is taking away permission to forget, reducing teacher paperwork, measuring student enthusiasm, and previewing content yet to be taught. Positive results build upon the intrinsic motivaton of educators as well as students. Lee Jenkins is the principal consultant and speaker with L to J consulting group. Click to view a typical evaluation by seminar participants.
Formative Assessment Formative assessments provide process data. How are we doing? Does it look like we’ll meet end of year expectations? The formative LtoJ® process includes these steps: • Inform students in writing what they will learn for the year (or course). See Example • Randomly select items from the end of the year expectations for weekly non-graded quizzes. (The recommended number of weekly questions is the square root of the total concepts for the year). • Students graph their progress and know if they are on target to learn the year’s content by the end of the year.
Student Assessment Students own their own formative assessment data; it is not kept in a teacher folder. The next slide is from high school students in advanced physiology. The age of the student does not matter; it is the ownership of the student assessment that counts.
Classroom Assessment What normally passes for “classroom assessment” is not really assessment of the classroom; it is a collection of student assessments. A grade book, for example is not classroom assessment; it is a collection of student assessments in one place. This is best understood in athletics where we have data for each athlete and data for the team. . The graph above is classroom assessment in that it adds up the total for the class each assessment. This total can be items correct when assessing background knowledge or it can be adding up rubric scores when assessing performance.
School Assessment School formative assessment is obtained the same way as classroom assessment – by adding it up. The photograph at the right documents student body progress in learning vocabulary. ATB is for all-time-best.
Standards Based Assessment Standards-based assessment sounds wonderful; the problem is that standards are not usually specific enough for student assessment. The standards are the foundation, but not enough. For example, a reasonable standard is for students to know major locations in South America. Students need to know which locations. We spell this out place by place. Are students being assessed against the standards? Yes. But even more importantly, they are being assessed against the essential content derived from the standards.
5 Whys In any organization, when things go awry, people have two choices: blame people or blame the system. If the same problem occurs over and over, it is a system problem and people need to ask why, why, why, why, and why some more until they find out why. The book Permission to Forget: And Nine Root Causes of America’s Frustration with Education is an attempt to ask why 5 times to discover what is beneath the surface.
Standards for Students • Geographic literacy • Yikes!
Student Engagement The survey results at the right are from the Iredell-Statesville, NC School District. Results were compiled from a teacher survey one year after the initial LtoJ workshop. The combination of the elements described in the first slide create this positive impact upon student engagement. As John Maxwell, stated, “People need a point for their head and a picture for their heart.” This seems to be one of the key insights for student engagement. 0=Just started, too soon to tell; 1=No impact; 3=Some positive impact; 5=Strong positive impact http://johnmaxwellonleadership.com/
Impact on Student Engagement 0=Just started, too soon to tell; 1=No impact; 3=Some positive impact; 5=Strong positive impact
Intrinsic Motivation Students are born with all the intrinsic motivation they need for life. Almost all five year olds enter kindergarten with this intrinsic motivation intact. The issue for educators is NOT to motivate students, but to figure out how to keep the motivation they bring with them to school. The 10,000 incentives students receive between kindergarten and grade 12 are not doing the trick. In LtoJ seminars 1342 teachers were asked what grade they taught and what percent of students loved school in their grade level. The results, grade level by grade level, are on the next slide. Educators should not be defensive when they see these results; they are not causing this on purpose. It is basically relying upon extrinsic motivation instead of protecting intrinsic motivation, that is causing the decline.
High Standards High standards should pertain to high expectations for what is learned, not high standards for any particular method. In other words, teachers state clearly the content to be learned and the quality of projects to be completed. Students have choices on methods they employ to learn the curriculum. There are multiple ways for a student to prove they have met the high standards.
Quality in Education For educators who know the work of Dr. W. Edwards Deming the term quality in education has a particular meaning. The history of the word quality has to do with comparing it to quantity. In manufacturing it is not, how many you made(quantity), but does your product work over a long period of time (quality). The education work for quantity is “cover.” The quality word is “learn.” It doesn’t really matter if the curriculum is “covered.” “Can the students prove knowledge several years later?” is the measure of quality. The theory behind LtoJ® seminars comes from the work of W. Edwards Deming. This theory is not about better teaching, but better leadership of the learning.
Quality Improvement Quality improvement is getting better. It is not about meeting arbitrary goals, but about always doing better than in the past. The psychology for student engagement is significant. Suppose a class of students know 53% of the year’s content and they are challenged to know 60%. In fact, after the next assessment they know 58%. Instead of being encouraged by achieving their all-time-best, they are discouraged by not meeting the goal. Dr. Deming called these arbitrary goals as “pulling numbers out of the air.” The next slide shows a school goal. It is set as improving over last year.
Education Speaker A typical evaluation from Lee Jenkins’ seminars. On a 1-5 scale, 50 participants Clear information: 4.94 Prepared speaker 4.94 Materials 4.82 Overall evaluation 4.96 Recommend to Others 4.9
Alignment The most important alignment is alignment with each other. Of course, using state standards is a guide, but educators must align with each other. This means there are no duplicates on essential content from grade level to grade level. How is alignment done now? The students are questioned, “You had this last year, right?” And what do the students say? “We never saw that!” The adults need to be in charge of alignment. Now, we say, “I have the list of key concepts from the past three years in my hand. I’ll provide a copy to everybody. If you see something you do not remember, talk to me. However, we are beginning on the content for this year’s essential learnings day one of the school year.”
Teamwork The true measure of a leader is getting people to work hard together! John Maxwell, Talent is Never Enough, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville, TN, 2007 When implementing LtoJ, it is not uncommon for a classroom of students to praise the success of a lower performing student. Why? It is because when the total correct items or the total rubric scores are added up, everybody counts. When a star is placed on the wall for every student over 80% correct, there is no team and lower performing students are normally discouraged, not encouraged. However, when the lower performing student moves from 1 correct to 2 correct and this one question puts the classroom over the top, everyone feels a part of the team. The next slide is a graph of a classroom with an all-time-best by only one question!
Students complete item analysis for both individuals and the class as a whole. Individual Classroom
Extrinsic Motivation It’s not working. On the average students are given five incentives a day. In elementary school this includes stickers, pencils, popcorn parties, and more recess time. In secondary schools incentives are typically grades, movies, and food. Five incentives a day times 180 days times 13 years equals 11,700 incentives American kids receive between kindergarten and graduation. If extrinsic motivation worked, almost all Americans would be happy with their education system.
Leadership in Education “Leadership in influence; nothing more, nothing less,” writes John Maxwell in The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership. The LtoJ® process is primarily designed to increase the influence teachers and administrators have on the lives of their students. For example, if 80% of students kept their kindergarten level of enthusiasm for learning, instead of the current 40%, what a powerful influence that would be on the next generation of adults.
Kindergarten The “Bell” is for the Middle of the Year
J Curve For some unknown reason if too many students are successful, educators are accused of grade inflation instead of being congratulated for success with students. The notion that the bell-curve is the goal never has made sense, but it is not enough to be against the bell-curve. The goal is to create the “J” curve. The bell is for the middle of the school year.
Title I Successful implementation of LtoJ® in Title I schools has been very rewarding. For example, the graph on next slide from Paradise Valley Unified’s eleven Title I schools shows a dramatic increase on Arizona state exams. It is a composite graph of all reading, all writing, all math, and all grade levels. When a process is introduced that students and teachers love AND the test scores increase, everybody wins.
Paradise Valley Title I AIMS Composite Graph 71.50% 70.10% 69.45% UCL 69.50% 67.50% 66.60% 65.50% PercentMeetorExceedStandards CL 64.48% 64.40% 64.20% 63.50% 62.70% 61.50% LCL 59.51% 59.50% 57.50% 55.50% 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009
Permission to Forget® Beginning in first grade spelling American students are taught how to cram and earn a positive grade. Even though teachers don’t tell the students they have “permission to forget,” students soon realize they don’t have to know these words on Monday. The process of cram, earn a grade, and forget is then transferred over to chapter tests. Can you imaging what education would be like if we never gave credit for crammed learning, but only for what was in long-term memory? It is possible to take away “Permission to Forget” today. Note that the 5th grade math LtoJ® quiz has two 4th questions and one 3rd question. At all grades in all subjects students are expected to remember prior year’s content.
Reducing Teacher Paperwork Teachers find almost no correlation between the hours they spend grading papers and student learning, according to questionnaires provided to 1342 teachers. Time is not well-spent. The recommendation is for teachers to grade 20% of the papers and 80% of the time randomly sample 5 papers per class, conduct an item analysis and teach to the errors. The structure is the same as for the football coach: 4 practices, 1 game, 4 practices, 1 game, etc. For teachers it is practice with item analysis 4 times, then grade, practice 4 times with item analysis, grade, etc. For manufacturers the aim is better quality products at less cost. For educators the aim is better learning in less time.
Measuring Student Enthusiasm It may well be that the most important information needed for success in education is student enthusiasm for learning. If students merely retained their kindergarten level of enthusiasm when they entered high school, think about the possibilities. The process is (1) asking students, on a regular basis, their attitude toward the subject being taught and (2) listening to student suggestions for improvement. A possible scale for student feedback is hate, dislike, OK, like, love.
Previewing Content The synonym for LtoJ® is review-preview. Students are continually reviewed on prior content and are continually introduced to content that may not be taught for several more months. The preview lessons are 30-45 seconds long followed by an estimate of when in the school year the particular content will be taught. Students love being introduced to content that will not be fully explained for several months.
School Goal is To Outperform Last Year January school-wide total gives hope that students will outperform prior year’s best score and meet goal.
No Permission to Forget The Lexington, NE weekly LtoJ® math quizzes have seven questions randomly selected from the current year expectations, two randomly selected from the prior year’s standards and one question from two years prior. This practice allows teachers to start much earlier teaching the current year’s content and review is continuous all year.
Results Maple Glen Elementary School, north of Indianapolis in the Westfield Washington School District administered the same exam to students in the spring and the following fall when they returned for the next grade. They wanted to know if the LtoJ® increased retention over the summer. Their results are: • 1st grade- 94% • 2nd grade- 86% • 3rd grade- 88% • 4th grade- 89 Most often results are reported as state exam results. Click on the links for results from Title I schools and high school biology. Title I Biology
Any Day of the Year! The students in this classroom answered 40% of the questions on an end-of-the-year LtoJ quiz. It was on the 51st day of the school year. The students calculated they had used 28% of the school year. It is quite motivating for students to know they are ahead in their learning – by 12% in this example.
